About
From the repair bench to AI systems
I'm Tristan Jessup. I'm based in the Lexington, Kentucky area and work as an Advanced Repair Agent at Geek Squad (Best Buy Store #259), where I'm the most senior bench technician. Every day I diagnose and repair Windows and macOS machines, recover data, mentor newer techs, and take the most complex escalations.
My path here wasn't linear. Before Geek Squad I worked in sales at Tesla, delivered mail as a USPS city letter carrier, and did customer service in furniture retail. All of it was customer-facing, and it taught me what the bench confirms daily: the gap between what a system does and what a person actually needs is where the real work is. That's the gap I care about in AI.
I'm working toward a B.S. in Information Technology with an AI concentration at Strayer University. Outside the bench I build agentic tooling and run small, honest experiments: MCX for evidence-first AI governance, Emergent Divergence for multi-agent drift, and Anvil for bench diagnostics. I publish under the name Mindlink Research Group.
I'm looking for roles in enterprise AI integration, AI solutions, and AI architecture, where hands-on systems experience and a habit of checking the evidence are worth more than a title.
How I work
Diagnose before you prescribe
On the bench you confirm the fault before you replace a part. I build AI the same way: define the failure, test the claim, then ship.
Claims map to evidence
If I say something works, there should be a test, a log, or a dataset behind it, and a plain list of what it does not show. MCX’s CLAIMS.md is the model.
Small models and real tools first
The smallest model that can do the job, with knowledge kept outside the model and tools behind narrow contracts, is cheaper, easier to swap, and easier to audit.
Fail closed
When an approval, a signature, or a check is missing, the safe answer is no. That rule matters more once agents can take real actions.
Certifications
- CompTIA A+
- CompTIA Network+
- CompTIA Security+
- Apple Certified Repair Technician
Toolchain
- Linux (Kubuntu, Arch, CachyOS)
- Windows
- PowerShell
- Bash
- Python
- Docker
- Git
- Claude Code
- Cursor
- MCP
- Ollama
- Open-WebUI
- Obsidian
About the logo
The Laughing Man is my avatar everywhere I'm online. It comes from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and its ring quotes Salinger: “I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.” My motto is the grown-up version: inspired by myth, accountable to evidence.